darcshadow

Is the carriage seated properly on the rail? Is the belt slipping? Sounds to me like something is simply preventing the cutting head from moving freely. The grinding noise is typically a result of the motor turning, but the belt not moving.

Your SB designs, if you saved them in native sb format, will have a .SBD file extension. Search your PC for those and copy them as Mz Skeeter said. It would be a good idea to get in the habit of saving your designs in EPS format so that in the future if you ever want to switch to a different program you will have your designs ready to go. EPS is pretty much a universal format, just about every vector program supports EPS files.

Is it just the angle of that photo, that square does not look square to me. Also, the corners look a little rounded. Lets get the rounded corners fixed before working about extra cut. And if that square is not actually square, that's a more pressing issue than the extra cut anyway.

Wildgoose is correct, the offset on a MH can not be adjusted on the cutter, it is a software thing.

After you arc the text, click on the text tools button at the top of the screen, then on the left, click on the Text on Arc tab and you have 3 options, above, above and below, or below.

As other have said, the marks will go away. In fact, the marks are not actually on the vinyl, they are on the backing material that the vinyl is conforming to.

my pleasure, happy to help.

And just for clarification, you need to ground the vinyl, this is typically done by grounding the stand, typically done by running a wire from a bare metal point on the stand to a bare metal point on the cutter. The cutter is already grounded internally, or at least it should be.

What sort of problems were you having? Are you new to the world of vinyl cutting and vector graphics? If so, it's possible that your problems are not solely the machine but a combination of lack of experience and the machine being cheap. People new the cutting world also often times have expectations that are not always accurate and some times just wrong. Please don't get offended at any of this, just trying to get a feel for your level of experience/understanding. I'd hate for you to go through the hassle of returning the cutter, getting a new one, and still having issues. I have a MH, which as Dakota said, is about equivalent to yours. I will attest it is not the best but after quite of while of playing and tweaking settings I've been able to get it to do what I need and have learned what the limitations are and have a pretty good feel of what I can and can not do with it.

Maybe, but the product works on your computer and falls on you to know if it would work with your external hardware, which it does. You've simply failed to fully research everything. Don't take that as an insult, it happens to lots of people when they get into something new and don't fully know what questions to be asking.

Ok, well that image is not going to auto trace well in any program. There are some guys on here that could probably do it pretty quickly, and there are several online services that will do it and usually do a pretty good job. But that image is going to have to be done manually to get a decent result. I think Inkscape would be better suited for this than autocad but it's been years since I've touched autocad. VM would work as well although I'm not as practice with VM and generally default to Inkscape for stuff like this. The thing I like about Inkscape for doing this, is you select the Bezier tool, draw some straight lines only really paying attention to where you put the nodes, then go back and grab the individual lines and drag/bend them to shape. If you can't get the shape you need, pick a point on the line, add another node and continue adjusting. At least that's how I do manual traces and for most stuff it works pretty well, can just be time consuming for large complicated images such as this one. As an example, I've attached a zip file with a dragon image I pulled off of google. I then vectorized it with both Inkscape and VM default settings for both. There is a very slight difference between the two but not enough to be of notice. I put the two vectors in a single EPS file. I then opened that file in Inkscape and VM and saved it off as a DXF using the default settings in Inkscape. I have not tried to reopen the dxf file as don't have a cad program to open them and Inkscape or VM would just do a conversion back to something they can use. I did notice the dxf file created by inkscape was quite a bit larger in file size than VM. For going from a raster graphic to a DXF Dragons.zip

Have you converted the text to paths? I wouldn't think it would matter, but worth a shot.

I have my OC set to 1mm, probably a bit high but it doesn't seem to cause any issues.

Messy how, just bad corners or are the edges not straight? If it's just that the corners are not square that would be an offset issue.

You were on the right track with changing the units per inch, the calibration routine above will set the units per inch. for reference, my units per in on my MH are 996.08 x 997.6. Also note, you'll need to do this for each cutter as each cutter is going to be a little different. Once you get this set correctly and if the dove trail problem comes back that would be an offset setting. Dove tails are a result of too much offset.

Go to your Vinyl Spooler, Under Calibration, the last option in the list should be Calibrate Cutter Scale, run that routine.

Try cutting a large square then measure it. Since you don't have the pin you'll have to waste some vinyl but you need to know if your step counts are correct. Cut a large square and measure it to see if all sides are the lengths expected.

Are you wanting to import or export DXF files? Or both? From your initial post I thought you were only wanting to import them. In either case, if you have a sample file you can share, post it up and we can do the VM conversion for you so you can see the results, I have VM DSR V4.0 which will import/export DXF files. I'm sure others with the different variants of the program can help and find you the cheapest version that will meet your needs.

Did you try any of the other suggestions? There have been several. What were the results? Need to know the results of the suggestions in order to offer additional advice.

Yeah, I've never understood why they say it's not compatible, unless they actually mean the usb to serial chip that is inside the unit. If you're talking to it over the serial bus it shouldn't matter what os you're using so long as the program is using the correct communication protocal. Since you have it "working" and it's just not cutting well I'd say it's not likely a Mac problem. If the problem just started after you moved the cutter, go over it and double check that everything is still tight and lined up. Also make sure the cutting head is correctly on the rails.

Here's some large sheets listed on Amazon. Do a google search for 3M reflective White and you'll find some. https://www.amazon.com/3M-Reflective-Adhesive-Vinyl-Silhouette/dp/B074G4NGMC/ref=asc_df_B074G4NGMC/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=216645986348&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=18127706468128079468&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9027204&hvtargid=pla-362145529650&psc=1

Try with pen and paper and see if it behaves the same. I'd also slow the cutter way down. I have an MH and run it about 120, 300 is really fast for that machine. Have you check the calibration of the steps? With pen and paper have the cutter draw a 6" square and check to see if it is actually 6" on each side. What program are you using for cutting? Vinyl Master has a calibration routine that works really well. Other programs probably have something, at the very least they should have a way to control the steps per inch. Your pressure seems high too. Set it as skeeter instructs, I currently have mine set to 90, but I'm not trying to cut two layers at the same time, still, I wouldn't think you'd need much more than 150. It should probably also be noted my machine is about 6 years old and each machine is going to be a little different. I'd also suggest going to a 60 degree blade for cutting through that thick of material. Not related to your problem, but are you wanting to block the light completely? If so, you might try vinyl with a metallic backing such as reflective vinyl. It'll dull a blade faster, but it should block the light with a single layer and no need to double layer.

Most likely the software is locking up because it is trying to talk to the plotter that has gone off in the weeds. If you wait long enough after hitting cancel, the software will eventually time out and give up trying to talk to the hardware and start working normally again. When you say the cutter resets, does it go back to home and stop? Typically when static is the problem the cutter runs away and feeds vinyl till you stop it, often times with the knife down and cutting a nice long slice through your good vinyl. Everyone talks about the memory issue, I have a MH and I've never had a problem and have cut some designs with a ridiculous amount of nodes. If the software is working correctly the amount of memory on a cutter should be irrelevant. Software feeds the data to the cutter till the memory buffer is full, then waits for the cutter to request more. In theory, a cutter could work with just a few bytes of memory, it'd be extremely inefficient, but it could be done. I would try the pen thing mentioned by skeeter first, and if it still behaves weird, then try different software. If it behaves weird with no blade, and different software there's a good chance it's a hardware problem.

Just because a driver is built in doesn't mean you don't need one. Windows has tons of drivers built in.

I often wonder if that is actually a correct statement. Several of the high end cutters still have serial ports so the motherboard is using good old fashion RS-232 on it some place. I would guess the cutter is also just using a USB-2-Serial chip, the only difference being it's a higher quality chip, and the drivers have been written in such a way that it does not identify itself to windows as a comm port.